Granger Korff - 19 with a Bullet

We were deeper in Angola than we had ever been and the bush was very different to what we were used to. Gone were the desert features and scrubby, scattered trees of Owamboland. They had been replaced by sizable tropical koppies and small rocky mountains. The trees were thick, high and green. Beneath us a huge herd of 300 wildebeest scattered and galloped wildly, tossing their heads as our Pumas hammered low over them. I nudged John Delaney sitting next to me and pointed it out to him. It was a sight to see. I thought they looked happy that the noisy choppers had provided a break in the boredom of grazing in paradise. Some of them kicked up their back legs and pranced as they ran.

Back at Ionde we couldn’t believe it when Commandant Lindsay, who was a running buff, made us run up and down the airstrip early one morning.

“He’s fucking crazy, running in the middle of fucking Angola on an operation. He’s carrying this paratrooper thing too far. Just because he’s addicted to running, we have to follow?” Stan was pissed.

“Keeps you in shape, man. What you talking about? You want to be a top-notch paratrooper?”

“Don’t need to run to be a top-notch soldier. You think the German Wehrmacht had time to run on the Eastern Front?”

“No, but they did plenty of running at the end.”

“That’s bullshit… but anyway, do you think then that the Russians had time to run in the middle of the winter?”

He had a good point.

We sat around smoking, arguing and debating over stupid things. I told Kevin McKee, who had boxed professionally as a club fighter before the army, that I wanted to maybe box seriously when I got out.

“Its a hard game, my broer . But you can do it if you get into it. You’ve got to stay focused. It’s like going on a operation—if you let your mind wander for a second you get nailed. It just takes one good punch to change the fight and turn it all around. You think that you’re doing all lekker and then, boom ! You seeing fucking stars and the crowd’s shouting for your blood. It also takes a while to learn to be relaxed in the ring. You got to be relaxed, my broer . Your mind should be almost as relaxed in the ring as we are talking to each other now. But if you got a good punch, Gungie, it will help a lot and save you in tight spots.”

I pondered on it. I did have a punch. I could punch with both hands. I also had a cold, dead, unfamiliar anger that had recently come to light. The drizzle had set in and I spent more time lying in my hooch under the body bags. My mind was on Civvy Street which was only six weeks away but seemed like six months. I thought what it would feel like to get back into the real world. Or was this the real world? Which one was reality? This seemed pretty fucking real right here. I wondered if I would be able to hang with all the bullshit things that we used to do and talk about. I thought about the band and wondered if I would be able to get back into music again and sing. Get into a good rock band and hammer out some good hard rock and maybe make an album and play at some top Jo’burg clubs. But it felt as if I had no more music in me, that it had all been hammered out. All the dreams of doing things and flying high. I realized that most of my dreams had disappeared. I toyed with the idea of signing up short-term, even going back and trying for the Recces again. I would probably make the tough selection course now that I knew what to expect. (I spoke to an American SEAL in later years. He said they didn’t even do the long, gruelling selection that we did, although they had a few weeks of non-stop hell that they called ‘Buds’. Even my platoon buddies didn’t believe the shit we had gone through on Recce selection and how far we had walked with next to no food.)

I moped around moodily in my bivvy as the drizzle dripped off the body bags. The clouds had set in. The stink of shit was starting to permeate the area as we had been dug in for eight days now and the little tufts of white toilet paper half buried in the sand were getting closer. The word from the fighting group was that there were many small bases but they were having miss after miss—each time SWAPO slipped out just in time.

It was on one of these gloomy, drizzly days that we flew out, speeding over the treetops for the umpteenth time. We landed in a SWAPO base that had been hit by H Company and looked to have been cleared out. It always looked the same: the trenches cut the earth in between the bush in zigzag patterns and mounds of earth signified the many bunkers that were camouflaged with grass and branches. There had been some fighting but the talk was that they had got only about 15 kills in the whole base which, by the looks of it, seemed to be quite large. We stood under a tree feeling like outsiders and watched. It looked as though it was going to be another lemon but we were thankful for the break in the boredom of sitting as Fireforce at Ionde. We sat and watched the scene. A Buffel had pulled up close by and H Company paratroopers were loading a small mountain of captured SWAPO ammunition. Cases of RPG-7 rockets, landmines, AK ammunition boxes and food. The loaders laughed and worked with confident ease, handing the heavy boxes up into the Buffel. I watched them and smoked.

Derek Wood (aka Woody) was huddled over on top of the Buffel moving a heavy box when an explosion erupted inside the Buffel in a flash of white smoke and flame. He arched from the top of the high Buffel like a Mexican rock diver and landed flat on his back about ten metres away. A stunned silence followed as everyone stood and looked at Woody who was writhing on the ground in pain. Some H Company troops rushed to his aid. A fire had broken out in the Buffel next to him as the flames quickly licked up and reached the kit bags that were strapped to the roll bar. The Buffel, loaded with ammunition, RPGs and landmines burned for a minute, with no one really seeming to comprehend the danger. After a while we all began to edge away from the area and the burning vehicle, whose rear was almost fully engulfed in flame. Suddenly a skinny major leaped in and started the Buffel up. He drove the burning Buffel into an open chana 100 metres away, calmly jumped out and trotted back. His quick action might or might not have saved some lives but he had unwittingly parked the now blazing and popping vehicle closer to the choppers. It was amusing watching the usually cool and drag-ass helicopter pilots sprinting across the chana to get to their choppers which they quickly lifted off out of the brown smoke.

We watched as hundreds of rounds now started popping off and explosions boomed in the blazing Buffel, realizing what a sharp move the major had pulled. I heard later that he was awarded the Honoris Crux, the top South African award for conspicuous bravery, for his action. Hey, if I had been on my toes and not thinking like a dom troopie , I could have got the Crux. I was right there.

It wasn’t half an hour later and we’d lost interest in the almost burned-out Buffel, when another loud explosion erupted 50 metres away. I turned to see a cloud of smoke and dust billow into the air. No one knew what had happened but we soon got word that a lieutenant had killed himself when he triggered a booby trap in one of the many bunkers in the SWAPO base.

Everyone was ordered not to touch anything and all loading was brought to a halt. We sat and watched as they carried the lieutenant’s body away on a stretcher in a clear body bag, like the one on the roof of my bivvy.

“What a fuck-up.”

“Yes.”

“Can you believe all the shit that has happened in front of our eyes… just in the last half hour?”

“I know… it’s been a fuck-up from the start.”

“Man, I’m glad we are Fireforce for this op. These guys have been chasing ghosts for weeks and all they’re doing is fucking themselves up.”